When I first became a chief financial officer, 25 years ago, I had taken a few accounting courses, but I was not a CPA. Like many CFOs, my background was in investment banking and financial analysis. I was lucky; I worked with a terrific controller, who patiently guided me through what I needed to learn to be an effective financial leader.

Today, I often meet CFOs with backgrounds like mine. When they ask me what I wish I knew when I started, I offer them these 10 key questions:

1. What are all the management judgments we are making as we prepare the financial statements?

Some numbers in the financial statements are facts. Others are opinions. Let’s figure out which are which.

2. How long does it take us to close the books?

Why does it take us so long? What manual processes are involved, including rekeying data into our system? How can we improve these processes?

3. Do we have one integrated system for both our financial information and our operating metrics?

One of my favorite leaders used to say there are facts, and there are true facts. If you have two or more reporting systems, you will spend unproductive time reconciling differences and untangling conflicting definitions. I’ve seen one company with four different definitions of revenue: non-GAAP revenue before credits, non-GAAP revenue net of credits, revenue for calculating sales compensation, and GAAP revenue. You need a single source of truth.

4. Why do we have so many reports?

In one example, a financial department distributed more than 100 periodic reports. Many of the people who had originally asked for these reports had moved on years before, and the accounting team had no idea who was reading them or whether they were still valuable. After th team moved the reports online, to be accessed by staff in a self-serve manner, it became clear which reports were being used and which were no longer valuable.

5. Show me everything we are doing in Excel. Why are we using Excel?

Excel is a brilliant invention, versatile and easy to use. It’s also hard for groups of people to use together, easy to make mistakes, hard to find mistakes and insecure. The best way to use Excel is for rapid prototyping of anything new. Once the process is stable for three months, it’s time to move to a collaborative, automated, secure enterprise system and off Excel.

Jeff Epstein

Jeff Epstein is an operating partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and the former chief financial officer of Oracle. He serves on the board of directors of Intacct, a cloud-based financial management company.

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